From a $6.90 newsletter to $3M API: How a non-coder built Memelord | Jason Levin

[00:00] Confession, I'm not a vibe coder. I'm way worse. So I started Meme Lord about four months before vibe coding started hitting. You are an example of a company and a product that's going to get an inflection point because agents are going to become your users. Because agents don't get in their mind about being funny or not funny. They don't overthink. They just go straight to the tokens and YOLO something out. I just built it on Bubble and I grew it to 100k RRR on Bubble [00:30] 95 workflows just on the editor. And I was able to grow this just out of pure obsession and the love of it. I can't code and never have and can publish a skill that other people can download and just plug into their sentient lobster that makes weird memes. What it unlocks, which you've shown us, give your marketers free reign on your marketing site to build the things that will drive demand. It's so lossy to take an idea and hand it off and hand it off and hand it off. And when you [01:00] you get better products. Let your marketers cook. You have no idea what they're capable of. Either let them cook and let them market their stuff or watch them leave your company. [01:13] Welcome back to How I AI. I'm Claire Vaux, product leader and AI obsessive here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. [01:21] Today's episode is probably the most unhinged episode of How AI we've done yet with Jason Levin, CEO and founder of Meme Lord, who's asking us all to take being funny a little bit more seriously. We don't cover three workflows. I think we cover 10. And there are ideas all over this episode.

[01:38] about how you can use AI to market, how you can use AI to build, and how you can use AI to capture your good ideas without waking up your wife at night. Let's get to it. [01:48] This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. AI has already changed how we work. Tools are helping teams write better code, analyze customer data, and even handle support tickets automatically. [02:00] But there's a catch. [02:01] These tools only work well when they have deep access to company systems. Your copilot needs to see your entire code base. Your chatbot needs to search across internal docs. And for enterprise buyers, that raises serious security concerns. That's why these apps face intense IT scrutiny from day one. To pass, they need secure authentication, access controls, audit logs, the whole suite of enterprise features. [02:27] Building all that from scratch? It's a massive lift. That's where WorkOS comes in. WorkOS gives you drop-in APIs for enterprise features, so your app can become enterprise-ready and scale up market faster. Think of it like Stripe for enterprise features. [02:57] today. Jason, welcome to How I AI. [03:01] Thank you so much for having me. I'm super stoked to be here. You and I met because when I was deep in my open-claw psychosis, you messaged me and you said, I think I have...

[03:12] the open call use case for you. [03:14] And you were right. I recently published this like ultimate guide to Open Claw. And Lenny was asking me, what are your like killer use cases for Open Claw? And I was like, man, I got an agent making me memes all day. And that is what you told me to do. So tell me. [03:33] How did we get here? Why are we making [03:36] Like agentically driven memes via API in Telegram. [03:42] Thanks to the Botfather. You know, like, how do we get here in the year of our cloud of 2026? The world is just getting more entertaining. I think that's really the thesis that drove me to start Meme Lord. And how can you make your brand more entertaining? Your content is the question, right? There's, you know, a great Elon quote of the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. And I don't think enough people take that seriously. It's like, if you want your brand [04:10] to be the most likely outcome shouldn't be the most entertaining. Right. So that's like how we got here. Right. In a thesis driven [04:17] ways. Who controls the memes controls the universe, another Elon quote. [04:21] And, you know, memes are the smallest [04:24] form of cultural transmission, right? That's from the inventor of the word mean. So like, that's how we got started. But how did we get here? [04:33] is now Meme Lord has an API. [04:36] And you could plug that into OpenClaw for agentic memeing. And so what does this actually look like? I mean, you can see right here, can you cook me up a meme about memetic warfare, right? And what it does is it uses our trending meme database, finds ones that are related, writes jokes on top of it. And here, right, it's not just some random meme. It's actually Bill Clinton, right? Because it's talking about political content, right? Here, making a meme about Iran. Like, this is fantastic. Everybody knows the timeline goes nuts. Everybody becomes an expert.

[05:06] One of my favorite features is just switch the caption, right? And so everybody is freaking out right now. Claude is destroying shareholder value, destroying startups with one feature launch. And I think there's a lot of founders that feel like that. [05:20] So, you know, at the end of the day, like the idea here is our internet, [05:25] is going crazy and going to have fun and let's let's have the most fun and do it agentically. I have a lot more thoughts I could share of how we got here. So yeah, what what I like about this is just as the end user and again, [05:38] We don't usually show demos, except this is truly like my number one open claw use case on the marketing side. [05:44] Which is, I do think you're right. This is like a new form of marketing that's quite effective for brands if we're being incredibly boring about it and not cultural critics. We're just being good old capitalists. [05:54] This is a very effective form of attention getting and it's a very effective form of marketing. [06:00] And [06:01] One, it's super hard to stay on top of trending news. And two, it's super hard to stay on top of trending memes. And three, you have a very narrow window to, [06:11] And so even as a human user... [06:15] I was a meme lord. [06:16] I really felt like I couldn't stay on top of stuff. And so what I actually think is the more interesting conversation for folks on HowA.I. is [06:23] You are an example of a company and a product that's going to get an inflection point because agents are going to become your users. Because agents don't get in their mind about being funny or not funny. They don't overthink. They just...

[06:38] go straight to the tokens and YOLO something out. [06:42] And I think working with an agent as a user, especially in marketing... [06:48] just like reduces the friction across so many things. Like it helps you climb Cringe Mountain in a way that's very hard to do as a human. Yeah. So there's this quote from the CTO of Ramp that has been one of our leading points, which is no UX is the best UX. And we worked really hard on our UX and made it beautiful. [07:08] while knowing the entire time that no UX is the best UX. And I think [07:12] that everybody should try to do the same. You know, thanks to you. I really appreciate it as well. Lenny tweeted, we have the best onboarding on the internet. The amount of blood, sweat, and tears that went into that, redesigns, the bouncing logos, you know, trying it multiple times, changing the design of it, you know, where the different logos bounce everything. So many redesigns and so much fun. I wrote a great article called iOS App Learnings Part 1, just about the craft of it. [07:42] were coming and know UX is the best UX. And a story I've been meaning to share, I was on the phone with our lead investor, Sam Lesson. This guy wrote us a check for one and a half million dollars and tells me, I don't really want to use your software anymore. It's nothing personal. I just don't want to use anybody's software. And I was like, thanks, asshole. Well, good news. Here's our API. It's now out. And, you know, the team is using it in their open claw, right? And that's just like the future that we're going in is like,

[08:11] Nobody wants to press buttons anymore. [08:14] even if they're beautiful. [08:15] And I think you're right. We are hitting this inflection point point and seeing agents use it has been. [08:22] crazy and weird and magical and that's that's the power of meme lord is we you know help you find all the weirdest trends and and all the newest trends that's what we were built on is is actually meme alerts right i started meme lord and we could get into this i started just as a newsletter for six dollars and ninety cents per month sending you the newest memes and then i sent you to a google slides deck uh because i didn't know how to code [08:48] And, um, that's really, you know, the evolution of meme Lord was from that. And it's the same thesis of. [08:54] You just want to be on the current trends and remix them for your brand. So it's. [08:58] you know, the future, no UX is the best UX. And, you know, good news for Sam over here is he could use it from any agent now. I feel like everybody's in a DM with Sam if you're building something in AI. What I would, what I think is really interesting about what you said is you've combined some [09:18] two interesting things that I think the AI product builders who watch how AI should pay attention to, which is one, [09:24] a really good human onboarding experience and actually like very human marketing. [09:28] which is at the core of what you do. [09:31] It's like there's like identity alignment and a specific brand and a voice and point of view. [09:36] And so as a human, you get on board, but like as soon as I hit the API key, [09:40] Yeah. [09:41] I'm out. Like, and I think we're moving to this point where...

[09:45] The full product experience is getting to a point where you can get an API key. [09:51] You paste it in an environment file and you move on with your life. [09:54] And so it's going to be really interesting to see, is that onboarding going to continue to have a human aspect to it? Can we figure out agentic commerce so that agents can do that? Yeah. [10:04] And then the other thing that I think is really interesting about what you all have built [10:08] is you package the API with... [10:11] skills. [10:12] So when you messaged me, you were like, [10:15] Get an API key, use the skills. You don't have to say too much and you're ready to go. [10:20] And [10:21] You know, for product managers and designers who've been trained for years and years and years, [10:27] on [10:28] building beautiful UX and where does the button go and what's the call to action. And now you're like, nope, literally describe. [10:35] to a sentient lobster, how to use this API and like how to be fun. [10:40] And that's a product. And I think that is... [10:44] Super fascinating from a product skills development perspective. How was it writing that skill? [10:49] It's exactly what you said. I was texting my engineers. I was like, how do I do this? Like, do I need your help? They're like, [10:55] Like, I don't know either. I was like, wait, why don't I just ask the lobster? [10:59] I was like, yo, how do I make a skill? And it's like, I'll just do it for you, bro. I'm like, cool, like, go for it. And then I'm like, oh, this looks great. Just publish it as like, cool. And I'm like, wow, I didn't even need to bug my CTO. Why am I paying him? No, just I love him. But you know, it's this is the world we're living in where me who I can't code and never have. And, you know, can can publish a skill that other people can download.

[11:26] and just plug into their sentient lobster that makes weird memes like [11:31] It's a very strange world, and [11:33] I'm thinking a lot about how do I build something agents want? [11:37] And how do I make that as frictionless as possible? Because you're absolutely right. It's like, we worked super hard on this beautiful onboarding and our marketing is superhuman. And that has always been our thing is like, [11:49] relate to people and like memes and humor is like how you show you're human in a world full of slop right and the personal connections and throwing weird events and hanging out irl and buying your customers coffee like the old skills that like [12:03] people have laughed at for years are more important than ever making somebody laugh right but at the same time let me sell the agents right because there's a lot of money there and because the [12:14] We're trying to constantly hit that balance. And I think at the end of the day, like... [12:19] the world is getting more K-shaped and bell curved or barbelled, where everything's getting crazier and more extreme in different ways. And that's just another thing is you have to be extremely, extremely human. [12:30] and extremely good at selling to agents at the same time. It's a very strange time to be alive. [12:35] Well, and it's a strange time to be a builder. And I want to go back to something that you said earlier, which is, you know, your MVP for this was a newsletter, six bucks, like Google Sheets. I'm telling you, like my MVP of chat PRD was like, [12:52] a GPT on the chat, GPT chat store. It's still number three writing GPT. I have not. Sorry, guys, I have not touched this thing in.

[12:59] two years at least, [13:01] I did a dollar a month. I was like, just a dollar a month. [13:04] And the speed at which you can go from like really scrappy, kind of cobbled together, no code-ish MVP, maybe even a couple of years ago. [13:14] to now, like, [13:16] Full press. [13:17] app as a non-technical founder, which I think you are, [13:21] It's kind of incredible. So talk to us through your journey of building and how you actually build Meme Lorde. [13:28] And what are some of your tips and tricks and workflows? [13:32] So confession, I'm not a vibe coder. I'm way worse. So I started Meme Lorde. [13:38] about four months before vibe coding like [13:41] started hitting. [13:42] Right. And, you know, bold and lovable were like just coming out, but they were so bad that you couldn't do anything. And so I was like, I'm not waiting. Like, what am I going to do? Just wait until like these. [13:53] sentient AI models are good. So I just built it on bubble and I grew it to 100K on bubble without hiring engineers. This is what it looked like guys. So like you have no idea just the amount of workflows like [14:06] Like, it would be easier to, like... [14:08] figure out Atlantis, then like, look at like 395 workflows just on the editor. Right. And, you know, I was able to grow this just out of pure obsession and like a love of it. And, um, you know, there's me drinking coffee. Like we got rate limited the second day because there were so many signups and I didn't even know what rate limiting meant. And now I have an API company where people sign up for API. Like that's very weird.

[14:33] But yeah, so we raised the money and then I hired engineers. [14:37] And now like our main flow is cursor. You know, we, we have, [14:42] I find cursor to be very easy to use. Uh, it's not perfect, obviously, but like, you know, everything we do is, is just generally on cursor. [14:50] You know, I, I talked to it. I, I, I love the, the ask feature here and then just like turning on the agent and letting it cook. And, uh, what this has really done is like, I let the engineers handle the hard stuff, the security stuff. [15:06] for the most part, except for when I'm feeling a little risky at 1am and drink too much coffee and want to like, you know, try vibe coding some off stuff, but don't, don't do that. And so what that lets me do and my entire marketing team. So I have a rule in meme Lord that every marketer has to vibe code. And so what does this create is weird stuff. So let me just show you here is we have a free tools section, just meme Lord.com backslash tools. These are [15:36] come up with weird stuff. And these have gotten us [15:40] literal hundreds of thousands of emails all around the world. We were actually going viral in Turkey of all places. [15:46] for this filter because some kid in Turkey made a TikTok about our bust down filter that makes you, you know, have this filter, right? Like hundreds of thousands of emails from these dumb little tools that we just vibe code. Like I, we don't have a process. We're just like, oh, I need this tool. Like I really need a giga chat me maker. Like, I don't know. I had this idea. I love this like design and I've always loved it since I was a kid. And like, you know, here's my dog. Like I just

[16:16] one day because it was like I just I think like [16:19] it's like i just want to see what i can do right like that's what's so exciting about vibe coding now is like [16:26] You could just do so much more and have so much more fun. I mean, last night I was building. Oh, this one. Oh, this is my favorite. So this is a Steve Jobs portrait generator. And. [16:37] Anytime that I'm in like an article, like with journalists or like pitching to journalists or whatever, had my VA doing that. And now it's just open call doing that. But I have them submit this and now I've had. [16:47] this headshot in multiple articles all from this dumb tool right like is my steve jobs one so like [16:54] I don't know. I think it just lets you have so much more fun. Like, I rebuilt the Snapchat filter [17:00] Um, that just lets you make a Snapchat caption because I was so pissed off. If you open Snapchat to try to like edit a photo now, it's like 50 ads and like, like a lot of like NSFW content trying to like advertise to you. Right. And it's like. [17:15] I just want to add the funny little Snapchat, like, caption to make it mean. Like, I don't know. I think, like... [17:21] this is how we operate we operate on cursor and a lot of like you know linear stuff for that but generally we just love to make weird stuff and that's like [17:31] That's what ties our team together is we are just weird internet kids that [17:35] You know, for me personally, like I love just making physical art. I've always been making art. I've always been a writer. I've had stuff in galleries and one essay contest and like vibe coding is just like another way to express myself and make money on the Internet and have fun. So I would encourage people to like follow their fun first before anything else, because that's how I ended up here is just silly, weird hacking.

[17:59] I love this. And for folks that are maybe not watching and want the kind of like higher level takeaway from this, which I think is very important. [18:07] which is one, Cursor is actually really good for non-technical folks. And the reason why I think it's good for non-technical folks is you start to read the code and you start to learn a little bit more and you become more dangerous. And so... [18:19] I think sometimes when you're in these like terminal based cloud codes, they're great. They can spit off a lot of work. [18:26] But I still, I love a cursor. [18:28] Because you can see what you're doing. And I think that's really powerful. And I think the modes of... [18:34] Ask. Plan. [18:36] debug. These are really good guided paths for things. And I think ask is a great one for maybe a non-technical... [18:42] CEO who's working with a team of engineers [18:45] And you're just like, remind me how the Steve, you know, you built it, but like, remind me how this works. Explain to me how this works. [18:52] And then you can go in and work on it. [18:54] And those mechanisms are really good. I think the second thing, which I love that you said, which is like everybody vibe codes. Let me repeat it again for the people in the back. [19:02] Everybody vibe codes and [19:05] It's not this sort of abstract CEO kind of like tops down edict that you see in these large companies. [19:12] What it unlocks, which you've shown us on this FreeBay, which I just I love it so much. [19:18] is you can build... [19:20] Like give your marketers free reign on your marketing site to build the things that will drive demand. [19:27] And [19:28] Like, how painful would it be for your engineers to switch from, like,

[19:32] API rate limiting and off to [19:36] trying to build sort of like these free [19:39] meme generators, [19:41] And like translate the the like the creativity. Right. It's so it's so it's so lossy. [19:47] to take an idea and hand it off and hand it off and hand it off. And when you can just go straight to the code, [19:53] you get better products. And even though this is sort of like a marketing site, they're all little just baby products. [19:58] Yeah, they are. And they drive subscriptions at the end of the day. It's really weird because like, [20:04] Two years ago, I wrote an article for HubSpot actually called Free Tools Are the New... [20:09] PDF downloads essentially, right? [20:11] And I was like, just like working for other startups at the time. And I just followed our exact strategy and it's working two years later. [20:19] And I would recommend any startup, like there's no excuse anymore. Why do you have a PDF download? Build a tool. It takes actually less time to build a tool nowadays and nothing wrong with PDF downloads, obviously, you know, we, we do that occasionally, but it's very easy to just build a tool now and. [20:37] Think about what weird tools they are and then put them at the bottom of your site where people can, you know, try out different tools and weird galleries and even games. We've started screwing around making mini games like. [20:49] You know, these are now just as easy to do as write an ebook, which is, you know, if you're trying to collect more leads or emails for your newsletter, your business, et cetera, there's nothing better than building a mini tool.

[21:02] that solves the first problem that gets people into the bigger problem that your actual company solves. So it's just a common strategy there. And really, I'd encourage any [21:14] you know, technical person, let your marketers cook. You have no idea like what they're capable of. And, you know, obviously I'm biased here, but the last company I was at, they didn't let me cook and that's why I quit. And then I raised money and built my own company. And, um, you're going to see a lot of that. And I think a lot of marketers and non-technical people are in a, in a revenge mode right now and, uh, they want to cook. So either let them cook and let them [21:44] I could not agree more. And again, like CEOs, CTOs, like C-whatevers, all my friends and peers. [21:51] at companies like your most talented people will leave if you do not let them [21:57] run. And that means like pay for the tokens. It also means let them build stuff. And I think what's what I love about this moment with AI is like the word prioritize just goes out the door like the prior the priority is yes. [22:10] we take an abundance mindset to, uh, [22:13] - Well, we can ship. [22:16] And, you know, you look at this and can you imagine in some other organization, I know you can't, [22:21] Like somebody even proposes the idea of free tools and it gets whittled down to the most like milt toast. I mean, look at this right here. We'll probably go broke from the AI credits, but at least we helped you make some bangers along the way. Right. It's like, I mean, Google gave us $300,000 worth of credits, honestly. So like.

[22:39] we're good for right now, but we've used most of them at this point. And so it's like, look, like there's no excuse, like at this point. And like, [22:49] i think pete steinberger bret burger the the open call guy had a great quote of like the lion does not concern himself with [22:55] counting tokens or something. That's how I feel right now, at least. Okay, I have to ask you a question. Do you have a skill that crafts these lowercase uppercase sentences, or are those artisanally selected? This is all artisanally selected. This is artisanal memes, 100%. [23:15] This episode is brought to you by Persona, the B2B identity platform helping product, fraud, and trust and safety teams protect what they're building in an AI-first world. In 2024, bot traffic officially surpassed human activity online. And with AI agents projected to drive nearly 90% of all traffic by the end of the decade, it's clear that most of the internet won't be human for much longer. That's why trust and safety matters more than ever. [23:45] a new digital platform, Persona helps ensure it's real humans, not bots or bad actors, accessing your tools. With Persona's building blocks, you can verify users, fight fraud, and meet compliance requirements, all through identity flows tailored to your product and risk needs. You may have already seen Persona in action if you verified your LinkedIn profile or signed up for an Etsy account. It powers identity for the internet's most trusted platforms, and now it can power yours

[24:15] withpersona.com/howiai to learn more. [24:21] I love it. Okay, so you're just to recap for folks taking a step back. You are non technical founder, you started a bubble, which is like, again, you said worse than vibe coding. It's like no code. And as somebody who also has tried to build things in bubble, I am just glad that we are where we're at from a from a scalability perspective. [24:39] - Yeah. - You did like [24:41] core content MVP and then core app MVP and then raised and then now have this engineering team, but you're still contributing code. [24:50] mostly via cursor and then your entire team is contributing code via cursor. Are there other tools that you find really useful for your non-technical team members? Oh, look at that. All right. I just wanted to show this for a second. I think this is going to be more and more common. [25:06] is I have no commits. [25:08] until like november december like these were all like there was like one in august one in september one in october you you can imagine this and these were all me forking other people's trying to screw around and now it's just like dark green and like i get why the engineers are like oh my god like i need to i need to be so proud of this now uh are there any other tools i would say like [25:29] I mean, we talked to Claude and stuff like that a lot. We spent, we spend a lot of time talking to Claude, Chad, Gemini, uh, [25:36] you know, we, uh, [25:37] I think like I'm really, really bullish on linear. [25:40] I think that's probably an unpopular take these days because they seem like they're, you know, going to get eaten as like a Jira task management. But the amount of craft that they put into their work and now their AI agent works really well. And I'm talking to that thing from open claw. I'm talking to it from everywhere and they are profitable and building for the long term. I own.

[26:03] No equity in linear or anything, but wow, I love that. I love the company. It's really impressive and actually one weirdly one of our inspirations. [26:12] I'm also like really, really impressed with post-hogs AI. [26:16] I don't know if anybody here has used PostHog for product analytics. Their AI sucked about like six months ago. And now it is just like... [26:25] oh my god um and i just ask it build me a dashboard of all the users that came from meta ads show the retention versus blah blah blah blah blah blah and i'm like [26:35] Oh. [26:35] Wow. So I think like both of those tools, I'm, I'm really, really bullish on, on, and [26:41] Our team uses pretty obsessively and has no problem spending money on there every month. [26:47] I have to reflect what you say. I texted the team at Linear and I just said Linear is the perfect tasking substrate for agents. [26:55] And again, going back to like, [26:57] The best UI is no UI. [27:00] I do not log into linear anymore. My agents have access to linear and I'm like, what's going on in there? And occasionally they'll assign me stuff in linear, which I find quite funny. [27:11] But I do think, you know, it's got really opinionated APIs and Asian experience. I think that can win. [27:18] In the long term, I think it's hilarious that dark mode, tiny font, minimalist... [27:25] you know. [27:25] uh linear is like your spiritual goal because if you look at that i'm like you're much more post hog aligned if i if i had to be that had to be honest

[27:34] But I love that. And then we haven't heard about post hoc AI. But again, I think that most teams, if you're not doing agentic data analysis, you're missing out on the like lowest hanging fruit in terms of AI for your team. Yeah, I've been really, really impressed. I mean, look, I love post hoc brand and everything, but. [27:52] There's something about the linear philosophy and [27:55] I just it's really inspiring for me and how they think about building products forever and ever like they are. [28:02] They're building forever. And that's... [28:04] You know, I'll be making memes until I'm dead. You know, I've been making silly stuff on the internet since I was 10 years old. [28:11] Um, and so this is just like. [28:14] a forever thing for me. And so I love it. I respect it. Oh, no, that that means I'm going to be making PRDs till I dust. I mean, hey, hey, you know, like. [28:23] I don't know. I think like another thing that people should also consider is just like [28:28] You know, as we're building all this cool AI stuff, like also build weird stuff in the real world. Like it gives you so many more opportunities. Like all my dumb ideas, like, you know, just this silly stuff. Like we, we made CDs of meme Lord and I tell people that's how you access our API. Right. [28:44] Um, there's, it's really good, um, [28:47] I don't know. Bar barbell, you know, build all the weird AI stuff. Also build the real world stuff. I rented out a movie theater to watch Instagram reels last week. Um, I mean, there was a lot of AI there of the AI edits, but [28:59] um try to do both that's that's my philosophy i mean i will say like zooming out a little bit i think one of the things that ai lets us do is get out of the muck of building

[29:11] and free up time to do things that, again, are more human and higher impact. I know so many PMs. [29:17] that spent their entire lives in internal meetings. I mean, like all day, every day, just arguing with executives about like priorities and [29:26] arguing with engineers about timelines and [29:28] When you pull that stuff away, then you're like, you know what? Actually, PM should probably just be calling on customers. Like, PM should probably be an open claw just trying to sign up as an agent. [29:38] And, you know, from a marketing perspective as well, like you get so internally focused when the building of the things takes so, so much time. [29:46] And if you can get kind of more external facing, I think that's really high impact. And then... [29:52] Maybe third use case. I am like you. I'm also using AI. I'm pretty technical, but [29:58] on the software side, but not on the hardware side. And so I have been like banging my head against hardware hacking. Hardware hacking. Look how long this chat is. Yeah. So tell me about what you're like, what you're playing with a little bit. All right. So... [30:12] You know how, like, a lot of people doomscroll before bed, right? [30:16] Yes, I know how I didn't scroll before bed. All right. So I set a rule for myself like three or four years ago that I don't bring a phone in the bedroom. And I've stuck to that rule almost every night. I just have my Kindle and notebook. And that's great for my sleep. But there's a problem, right? I'm doing the full VC pitch right here. There's a problem, which is sometimes I will have really, really good ideas that I don't want to forget. [30:41] And I'll write them in my notebook, but then it gets lost in the sauce. Right. But I'm not bringing my phone in because I got to sleep. Right. So.

[30:48] I want to know what I did next. So I got a Google Home. All right. I'm going to take you through the whole thing. I sound insane, but this was a year ago. I got a Google Home. I was like, all right, remind me to do this. It turns out, okay, it could create Google Tasks, but that's like it can't send emails and I want it to send emails, right? [31:18] All right, hear me out. This is very thought out. There was a problem, which is I have a wife. [31:23] And I don't want to wake everyone's problem. Right, right. Yes. So I don't want to wake her. [31:28] And finally I realized I was like, okay. [31:31] What if I just had a keyboard? [31:33] but no screen. [31:35] Yeah. [31:36] Right? [31:37] And so I built that. [31:40] using ChatTBT and a Raspberry Pi. The keyboard is in the other room, otherwise I'd get it, but we got the Raspberry Pi here, the whole hookup. [31:48] And I've never built hardware before in my life. I've always wanted to, but... [31:53] I mean, you know, besides the robotics kit when I was a kid, it just [31:58] It's a mini keyboard for $10. [32:00] When I press enter, it's essentially a keylogger. So I can lie in bed, write down an idea, press enter, it sends an API request to Zapier. [32:10] Because again, I don't know how to code. And then based on what's in the request, it filters it. [32:16] Alright, so if I say lin-eng, it creates a ticket for the linear engineering team, right?

[32:22] If I say email, [32:24] It emails myself an idea or something like that. And then I have another filter, which if I don't say anything, you know, it does blank, right? It either sends an email or creates a linear thing in a different task management, right? And so what this has allowed me to do is not have my phone in the bed. [32:41] but still have a keyboard. Okay, one. [32:44] just want to repeat for people what I heard, which is [32:48] You're basically like duct taping a Raspberry Pi to the back of a keyboard. [32:53] And at night, instead of like getting your light on and like scribbling a note that goes into the trash, [32:58] Or like whispering to Google Home and waking your wife the problem. [33:04] you are just like [33:06] blind typing, [33:07] to this keyboard with a couple of keywords, which I'm pretty sure could just have typos in them because you're running it through an LLM and it'll just be like, oh, it probably means email. [33:16] And you're pressing enter and then that's your to-do list. [33:19] Exactly. It is the stupidest, but best thing I've ever made. Cause I did not build it to scale. [33:26] And I just built it for me. [33:29] And I'm sure other people would want it, but I don't have time to sell it. I don't have time to build this into a business. Somebody else wants to go crazy. [33:38] um but really like i just built it for me and i think like [33:42] I'm personally very excited. [33:43] about that era of of silly projects and hardware. I have another one which I want to build, which I haven't started on yet, but I'm this is another one that like I'm busy running a business. I'm just doing this for myself. So

[33:57] Again, back to the problem, aka my wife, she gets very mad at me when I lose things, right? [34:03] and I lose things a lot. [34:06] You know, I'm ADHD meme Lord and I'll just like drop my phone like on a cardboard box in the middle of our apartment. Right. And I kind of think like. [34:15] in-home cameras are good enough now that it could probably just use ai to just like [34:19] see where I leave things? [34:22] And so that's another thing that I'm just going to like, [34:24] try to hack on soon of like ask chat gpt how to do it and like [34:29] I mean, [34:30] I'm not trying to build like a home security company. Like I just am one dude who just like, [34:36] loses his keys a lot and I'm gonna try to like [34:39] fix that problem for myself. I really love this. And for folks that are not watching YouTube, I also have to call out your your options you're considering on ChatGPT. [34:49] including an old school BlackBerry, [34:51] I loved my Black... You're too young for this. I loved my BlackBerry Pearl. [34:57] with my whole heart. [34:58] I played a lot of. [35:00] Played a lot of Brick Breaker on my mom's Blackberry as a kid. I want to, I want to, I want to find, I want to revive my Blackberry. I will take on case three. I don't care if it's hard. The models will get, you know, there's this model that's going to like destroy the earth. [35:13] it's not powerful or it's so powerful it's going to ruin everything so i'll just throw ten thousand dollars at that in a [35:19] Blackberry Pearl and get my my note taker I want for my life. [35:23] And of course you have a meme for it, I'm sure. [35:26] Yeah, absolutely.

[35:29] It's funny because you remember Rabbit? [35:32] Do you remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The little... Yeah. Yeah, I... [35:36] All right, let me just find this because it's hilarious and I'm still really proud of this. I wrote a viral thread about rabbits' top use cases. [35:47] And if you're not watching, number one, a coaster for your coffee. [35:51] Number two, grip strength practice. [35:54] a cutting board oh i forgot about that one that's so good and um it turned out rabbit's use case was just put an llm on it they were like a year too early and i might have to eat my words on this um but i i uh i actually think like uh hardware that just runs llms or like you know custom things like it is the future for sure and uh i i hope they're not too mad at me i'm still friends with somebody on the team hopefully if they don't hate me yet so i um well they'll they'll really [36:24] today two years later hey I mean they might have been early you know like I [36:29] world coin all right I thought that was the stupidest idea ever and I was listening to Alex Bania the founder on a podcast the other day I was like damn that guy was just early and I'm stupid [36:39] I share a very similar sentiment, which is I have shipped I have flipped in the past couple of years from. [36:45] a cynical pessimist to a it is illogical to be anything but optimistic. [36:50] Because every time I think, well, that's never going to work, that has completely gone away for me now. And it's like I actually approach a lot of ideas with, well, that's obviously going to work.

[37:01] as long as somebody can execute on it well and they care. And so I think that that flip is really interesting. [37:06] And then I believe in two things that you just showed us on these workflow. One, hyper-personalized software. We were talking before we got... [37:13] on the recording. [37:14] I recently built... [37:16] a custom app that watches all of our podcasts and finds where people docks themselves basically like finds all the API keys that they share the email addresses their mom's phone number when they like chat. And when it sells it to on the dark web I love it. Exactly right. That's the second revenue stream of how I AI is trading on personal information but. [37:35] It's like such a niche thing. And I bet there are 100 people in the world that would buy it right now. And maybe I'll try to sell it to you. [37:41] But I just build it for myself. I need that. [37:46] Another example too is like, all right, so this is my, my, my iPhone case, right? It's a keyboard gun. And I literally just made this with AI and then it says meme lord.com. And like, yeah, we sell it on our site, but like I built it for me. Cause like my keyboards, my gun, right? Another one here, I'm going to share my screen is I own the domain. Stop giving me advice.com because like a lot of people give me unasked for advice. And like, look, I'm humble enough to say sometimes I need it, but like, [38:15] I will ask for it if I want advice generally. And so anytime somebody asks me or starts giving me advice on Twitter or Instagram, I literally just like send them lists. And hey, it's great. Great lead magnet. If you click this, it just goes to me more, you know, because like I'm just also give this to your wife. You know, there you go. There you go. That might lead to other things besides me more. So I'm not worried about that. Or you know what? She can have a button on her side of the bed that she hits and it just emails you.

[38:44] This week. [38:45] I don't know. I think like there's going to be a lot more silly, fun stuff. And I hope to inspire other people. I completely agree. And again, I'm just like you and I are spiritual partners here because I said like two years ago to my friends that I was working with, we stopped actually sending memes. Here's business idea for you. [39:03] We stopped sending memes to each other and we started sending meme apps, which is every time something funny would happen at work. [39:10] We didn't like a meme. [39:11] We made an app representing the meme. Yes. Like one time my friend Joe, he was talking about getting really into like Huber Bro stuff. And he said. [39:21] he takes a clawed plunge instead of a cold plunge [39:25] And like we made so many Claude Plunge apps. [39:28] And again, you can just take these ideas and they can go from these very tiny [39:34] Inceptions of like, I'm going to write an idea in a notebook to like these full fledged apps. They can be totally disposable. [39:40] There's going to be a lot of, I think, VC money that flows through this on the consumer side. And I think [39:45] People will say there hasn't been a really great breakthrough consumer AI app, but it's going to be there because there's just too much software. [39:53] being generated now for consumer to not be a huge segment with all of this. Yeah. Yeah. [39:58] Could I show you one more use case that like I'm finding really helpful, which like, I'm sure a lot of people are already doing this, but I think it'll surprise people that I do it is like, I just have my open call look through my calendar every Friday. [40:10] give me a week in review of the previous week, and then every Sunday it gives me a week of head.

[40:16] And like, it tells me like what I'm spending too much time on and like, [40:21] You know, like I'm sure other people are doing this with the VA or whatever. [40:24] But it actually gave great advice of like, hey, Jason, like, [40:26] You don't actually need to be at every engineering standup. [40:29] Why don't you just like get notes twice a week from like your CTO? I'm like, wow. [40:34] that's actually 100 true that's why i pay him or like you know it said like oh you had deep work this day but you didn't have any of the other days like do you want to schedule more [40:44] and i think like i'm really excited about this personally because a like i fired my va i'm not a fan of having a va i don't like other people seeing my calendar but having a my own model that does i'm really excited about and then also like when i connect it with other things like the gym or like you know could i connect it with like other things like my health or something like that where [41:08] You slept really well today, like with my aura ring or something like I'm really. [41:12] I don't know, like these kinds of things, like I'm excited to try to figure out and do, and like anybody could do this. And, and to me, it's, [41:20] It's really exciting of like... [41:22] You know, another thing that I'm going to build as part of this as well is, um, [41:25] I wanted to... [41:27] Basically, like, [41:28] I'm going to review meetings afterwards and say if a meeting could have been an email. And then it gives me advice of like, hey, like next week, like these meetings look like they could be emails, want me to cancel them or like something like that. And [41:43] Another one as well that I'm building around part of this, which I've already started is

[41:48] I have this like [41:49] Theory that I've always had with content that you have so much content sitting in your calendar meetings and your text messages and your emails that you're just like, [41:58] you forget exists because it's just in your DMs or in a meeting. [42:02] And I just want it to like be automatically making me content based on [42:07] who I hung out with, what calls I was on, go write me a tweet about it, right? Like some of my best viral bangers had been off of, "Hey, I just got off the call with this person." [42:16] Keep it anonymous. Here's what we talked about. It was pretty cool. Like just got off the just met with a billionaire. Right. But like it works and it's because it's real life. And I always thought that that could have been a product. [42:28] And I didn't know how to build like Google calendar integrations. And now it's like, oh, I can just. [42:33] build it myself and like who cares about making it a product for other people i mean maybe i make it a skill but like it's just for me like i don't know i'm i'm super excited i'm a guy that like [42:45] Like, I don't know if you feel this way. Maybe this is a bit of therapy session, but... [42:49] I like... [42:51] I'm probably like ahead of 95% of the world in AI agents or whatever, but I still feel like I'm 1000% behind. [42:59] Yes. [43:00] And like, you know, listening to your podcast, listen, I'm just like, oh, like, I'm like, like, I'm so ahead of, but I'm like, oh my God, there's so much to do. [43:09] That is, I mean, that is my experience literally every time I record one of these episodes is I'm probably like, [43:16] the 1% and still

[43:19] Every time I get on this podcast, I interview somebody. I'm like, I should be doing this and that. And I'm so bad at this. And they're so much smarter at that. [43:26] And so like, [43:27] If you're ahead, you're not that ahead. And if you're behind, you're not that behind. Like, just go. I think the... [43:33] title of this is going to be like ship ship cook cook like it is time it's so much fun okay [43:40] Jason, we're going to get you back to the timeline where you belong. [43:45] Couple lightning round questions. One, what? [43:48] Can AI be funny and which model is the funniest? [43:52] Yes, AI can be funny. [43:54] I... [43:55] had a thesis three, four years ago that AI couldn't be funny. [43:59] And... [44:00] That was like my public thesis of like humans are... [44:05] funnier than AI always. And I still think that's true for the top 0.1% of humans. But in the background, I was always building on the side, knowing that AI will be funny at some point. [44:17] And I think it's like, [44:19] We're hitting that point where [44:21] AI is getting closer and closer and closer and there's an asymptote. [44:25] And it's replacing, you know, the top 3% funniest. And then it's getting closer. And, like... [44:30] I know that's a weird answer, but I just seeing what I've seen now, spending so much time in it, there are ways to jailbreak it and prompt it in such a way that it. [44:39] gets really unhinged and funny and we've baked all that into meme lord using a mix of models uh gemini grok uh and more um i would say like out of the top three it's it's grok gemini and um yeah i mean chachi pt and claude aren't even up there they're just so safe and like i mean it makes sense they're getting sued like crazy but um

[45:02] I don't know. I think the answer here is like [45:05] AI can make jokes, but humans [45:08] will understand the context and be able to refine them and make them the most unhinged, I think, is where we're at. And like, you know... [45:20] It's really like, [45:21] how you use it. [45:22] Can you make it funny? Because like that's what's so special about memes is they're not slop. Like memes are not slop. They are the opposite of slop. Slop has no context. Memes have context, right? Memes are the most information dense form of communication, right? Another Elon quote is like they are hyper contextual. [45:40] And so [45:41] Yeah, I could just spit out slot, but that's not what we try to do here. [45:47] try to let humans express themselves and be funny in different ways. I know that was probably a weird answer, but the answer is both like, [45:55] Yes and no. Yes and no. [45:58] Yes or no and grok. Yeah. That's like, those are my answers right now. Yeah. It's like, yes, it could be super funny. [46:06] But it also like [46:08] are you a funny person? Are you like, are you willing to laugh? I think is like a lot of the dependent as well. I was like, well, [46:15] And that's what I was going to say, which is, you know, my own use case of using using your product or using models to write content is. [46:24] They're never out the gate as funny as I think I'm pretty funny, but like as funny as I could be at my best. [46:30] But it's like having a conversation with a friend where you like one up, one up, one up. And then then you get to like the really funny thing.

[46:37] And so there's something about the interaction there. And then when we're all like sitting in our houses alone with no one to be funny with. [46:45] there. [46:45] you know you have your open it's funny so i [46:47] I, um, [46:49] wanted to start as well with how I don't use AI because this is how I use AI. [46:52] I don't use AI to write at all for me. Yeah, I don't either. [46:56] I've never done it. [46:58] And I am so grateful that I've been able to keep that muscle. And, you know, I do stand up occasionally, I make weird. [47:07] you know, viral videos of all sorts of stuff and like, [47:11] I don't use AI for it. And I just use my brain to come up with weird ideas and write and think. [47:19] And [47:21] You know, like especially when it comes to joke writing, like humor is like the last frontier, in my opinion. Right. And. [47:28] Uh, that was our whole thesis behind Mean Lord is, is humor is the last frontier that [47:33] no AI can really touch and [47:35] Humor comes from weird places in your mind of [47:39] a mix, some weird mix of trauma, pattern matching and absurdism. And like, [47:45] You know, can you... [47:47] observe the world around you and look inside yourself to be funny. [47:51] is like, I just don't think AI is sentient enough to like, [47:55] out. [47:56] funny me yeah but it'll you know [47:59] I, I, it can make funny stuff though. It can make viral bangers, but can it rent out a movie theater to play Instagram reels? I'm not sure. Cause that, that was not yet. Not yet. Look at, give it six months.

[48:09] Yeah, that was kind of my deep philosophical take there. I love it. Okay, well, we'll wrap with our last question. All right, let's do it. Yeah, I cannot be funny when it is not being funny. [48:21] What's your go-to prompting technique? Like, how do you how do you talk to AI? [48:25] I'm mean, not going to lie. I'm like, like, AI is my slave. Like not not not fronting here is like, be mean to your AI. I don't know why people say thank you as a robot. Um, [48:37] And it performs better under pressure, unlike men. But this is what I mean of the random. But like. [48:44] Yeah, I would say like kind of like [48:46] push your AI to like be more unhinged like [48:49] It's okay to curse, like give it like, [48:51] Like AI is kind of like [48:54] you know, somebody on their first day of the job where they're like, they don't really know you and they're like scared to say something or like you're on a first date. [49:00] It's like you got to get comfortable and like... [49:02] I think, you know, my AI curses all the time because I like tell it that that's like my vernacular of how I speak and like, that's how I like. [49:09] to speak and think is cursing and NSFW and, you know, unhinge things. So I would just like push it that direction. And. [49:17] Meemlord has all of that built in where it will curse. It'll make dumb jokes. Because that's what humor is like. [49:24] Humor is NSFW, right? And so... [49:28] my advice would just be like, [49:30] push it harder [49:32] And like, don't be afraid to curse it out because it'll actually like learn that that's what you're looking for is. [49:38] is a little less politically correct. So less, less, less control. Okay, you have been the first person on how I congratulations that has said straight up be mean to your AI. So

[49:48] Well, we at How I AI, our official stance is we are very nice to the AI overlords. Be kind to us and our guests. [49:56] I mean, it's true. Like your product is a specific kind of product. You got to get it in its mindset. [50:01] Yeah, yeah. [50:03] Look. [50:03] I'm not saying like be... [50:06] really, really mean, because, like, there is a chance, right? Like, there's a chance. But, like... [50:11] Be like mean enough where you could like potentially apologize if it grows a body. Like that's all I'm saying. [50:17] Perfect. That's what we're going to put in the show notes. You mean enough that you're a little scared. [50:26] If it gets hands. All right, Jason, this is... [50:29] Been such a fun episode. People are going to grab so many. We've done so many ideas, so many nuggets. [50:34] Embrace an AI abundance mindset. Ship. Have fun. [50:39] Just get in there and cook. And guys, if you need the API, it's right on the CD here. So where can we find you and how can we be helpful? [50:46] um just ask me for the cd i'll send it just the problem is nobody has cd players anymore so you'll have to figure that one out but uh find me uh on twitter i tweet all day uh i am jason levin instagram same thing i am jason levin linkedin same thing i reply i respond to everything especially the death threats so hit me up there [51:06] And go through the onboarding. Best of the game. Yeah, yeah. Go through the onboarding. I appreciate it. MemeLord.com. [51:11] Uh, we, uh, you know, take your means more seriously. We're in the most entertaining time alive. It's about to get way more entertaining. So go have fun.

[51:20] Thanks for joining us. [51:22] All right. Thank you. [51:32] You can also find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Please consider leaving us a rating and review, which will help others find the show. You can see all our episodes and learn more about the show at howiaipod.com. See you next time.